Christmas hols part 2

A nice, quiet start to the holiday. Got up late, we went into Helston’s Tesco and bought some food for Christmas and then did very little during the afternoon other than playing Oolite for a bit.

This evening, after a nice dinner, I discovered “The Fantastic Four” playing on Sky Movies 10 so watched that. I’m glad that I didn’t spend any money (other than the Sky Movies subscription) to watch the film. It was OK as a distraction but nothing to make an effort to see. It was definitely made using an action movie by numbers kit. I understand that there’s a sequel in the works. Hopefully it’s better than the original.

That’s about it, really.

Christmas hols part 1

It was a very cold, frosty and foggy morning which greeted me when I opened the blinks this morning, just the sort of weather you want when you’re planning to drive 270 miles. Still, by the time I left at 10:55am it was at least light and you could see a couple of hundred yards, though it took a good ten minutes to thaw the car windows enough to be able to drive off.

The drive down the country was mixed. Along the Oxford to Swindon road there were tantalizing gaps in the fog, giving beautiful views of a crisp, frosty morning with all the trees and bushes encrusted with bright frosting shining in the sunshine and contrasted by a deep blue sky behind. Unfortunately, these gaps in the fog were all too brief. The fog finally broke at Exeter, where the air temperature suddenly jumped from -1C to a balmy 6-7C.

Otherwise the five and a half hour journey down was uneventful. So, now I’m ensconced down here in Cornwall for almost two weeks, the longest break down here since last Christmas. I really do need the rest.

Gone digital

Well, it had to happen eventually. I’ve done the full switch over of all my A/V equipment at home to digital formats.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been racking my brain over how long it’s been since I last used my SVHS video recorder for anything other than timeshifting programmes and worked out that it’s probably been about three years. Although the machine works perfectly, for time shifting it can be a bit of a pain if you’ve recorded a couple of programmes, looked at one or two at the beginning of the tape and then need to record another one at the end. I’ve been thinking, therefore, about getting a PVR for a while but I don’t want to be tied into Sky with Sky+, the DVD recorders weren’t flexible enough and degraded the quality to fit a number of hours into 4.7GB and the HDD recorders didn’t have a means to write the programmes off onto longer term storage.

However, last Sunday morning, as I was buying a Christmas present in Comet I noticed a new breed of PVR, a HDD based machine with a built in DVD recorder.. or is it the other way around?
Wibbling about DVRs

It was 20 years ago today…

On this day in 1986 a momentous happening occured:

The SEND command was removed from use on the original EUCLID system by
University College Computer Centre.

The SEND command was used greatly by the undergraduate community via the
MISC.YAP and POOL.GOODYAP talking programs and it was a hard blow to us
hacker types.

So, independently, Alec and I wrote within the day basic replacements for
the talking programs which no-longer worked. I produced POOL.CONVERSE and
Alec POOL.CONFLAB. Subsiquent to this first day, we got together, along with
Robert Newson and made our programs work together. The final upshot of this
was the development of Bullet about 18 months afterward (after much talking
in the Pi office.).

So celebrate and make merry!

This was previously posted in the notices folder on Bullet earlier this afternoon.